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Background on the Ordinance and Rules:

Seattle has enacted an ordinance and administrative rules regulating scheduling practices for retail, food service establishments and full-service restaurants that addresses the following topics, effective July 1, 2017:

Advance notice of work schedules

Employee requests for schedule changes

Employer-initiated schedule changes and premium pay

Rest periods between shifts and premium pay

The “scheduled rate” to be used in premium calculations

Offering additional work to existing employees before adding headcount

Required notices and postings

Records retention

The ordinance and rules have several components and applies to retail and food service establishments with 500+ employees worldwide, full-service restaurants with 500+ employees and 40+ locations worldwide, and employees who work at fixed locations that are within Seattle’s geographic boundaries at least 50% of the time.

Selected highlights are below:

1. Advance Notice of Work Schedules:

Employers must provide a good faith estimate of an employee’s work schedule at the time of hire, including:

The median number of hours employees can expect to work each week

Whether the employee will be expected to work on-call shifts

Good faith estimates must be revised at least once per year, or whenever there is a significant change in the employee’s schedule

Employers must provide employees with a written work schedule (can be electronic) at least 14 calendar days before the first day of the work schedule

For newly-hired employees, or those returning from leave, employers may provide schedules from the employee’s start or return date to the last date of the currently posted schedule

2. Employee Requests for Schedule Changes:

Employers must allow employees to communicate limitations or changes in work schedule availability, and express any preferences for work hours and work locations where applicable

Employees can request specific schedules, and employers must either approve or deny them within 3 weeks of the request date

Changes in transportation or housing

Personal serious health conditions

Caregiver responsibilities

Enrollment in career-related educational or training programs

Other employment

Denials of employee schedule change requests must be provided to employees in writing

3. Employer-Initiated Schedule Changes and Premium Pay:

If an employer adds or subtracts hours from an employee’s schedule after it has been posted, it must:

Allow the employee to decline to work additional time

For adding hours: 1 hour at the employee’s scheduled rate in addition to pay for time worked (excluding hours employees voluntarily pick up resulting from teammate absences)

For subtracting hours: 0.5 times the scheduled rate on all time subtracted (excluding time for unpaid meal or rest breaks)

Premium pay is not required if: rounding under a punch policy would allow the employee to be paid in full for the extra time worked (ex: employee is scheduled until 4:00 PM, but clocks out at 4:02 PM and the punch policy rounds up to 4:05 PM)

4. Rest Period Between Shifts and Premium Pay:

Employers must allow at least 10 hours between the end of an employee’s work shift and the beginning of another, regardless of whether the shift occurs in one or more calendar days

If an employee begins work less than 10 hours after their last punch out, the employer must pay the employee a premium of 1.5 times the scheduled rate on all time within the 10 hour window (excluding time attributed to split shifts where the second shift begins 4 hours or less from the end of the first)

5. The “Scheduled Rate” to be Used in Premium Calculations:

If an employee is scheduled to earn more than one rate over the course of a scheduled shift, the rate in effect at the start of the schedule needs to be used

If the employee is scheduled to earn overtime or a shift differential at the start of a shift, these rates would need to be used in the premium calculation instead of the employee’s hourly base rate

6. Offering Additional Work to Existing Employees Before Adding Headcount:

Employers must post additional work hours to all qualified existing employees on their payroll for at least 3 consecutive calendar days before hiring new employees or contractors

Hours cannot be offered to a single employee only if they are capable of being split between multiple employees

7. Required Notices and Postings:

Employers must display a workplace poster from the Office of Labor Standards detailing employees’ secure scheduling rights in an accessible section of the workplace